Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn 2

Popper and Kuhn: Two Views of Science In this essay I attempt to answer the following two questions: What is Karl Popper's view of science? Do I feel that Thomas Kuhn makes important points against it? The two articles that I make reference to are "Science: Conjectures and Refutations" by Karl Popper and "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" by Thomas Kuhn. Both articles appear in the textbook to this class. In the article, "Science: Conjectures and Refutations", Karl Popper attempts to describe the criteria that a theory must meet for it to be considered scientific. He calls this puzzle the problem of demarcation. Popper summarizes his arguments by saying, "the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability." Kuhn says that he and Popper often agree as to what constitutes science and non-science. He claims that he differs with Popper in the methods that he uses to arrive at his conclusions. Kuhn says that if a line of demarcation is to be sought between science and non-science, we shouldn't look for a "sharp or decisive" one, because science is not objective, as Popper would have us believe, but subjective. Popper claims that the common answer to the problem of delineating between science and pseudo-science is that science uses an empirical method, deriving from observations and experiments. This explanation does not satisfy Popper. He has a gut feeling that areas of study like astrology are not science, and he attempts to come up with a theory to prove it. One of the problems I have with Popper is that instead of looking at a concrete problem and trying to come up with an explanation, Popper first made up his mind that astrology is not science, and then set out to prove it. By Popper's own admissions, confirming evidence is everywhere, but means little. This could be applied all of Popper's examples. Popper is "dissatisfied" with the Marxist theory of history, psychoanalysis, and...

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To start off ThomasKuhn always thought that there were to types of science. “Normal Science” the easy one everybody in the world did every day. Here is what Thomas said in his book “Structure of Scientific Revulsions”; “Normal Science", that is to say every day, bread-and-butter science, is a "puzzle-solving" activity conducted under a reigning "paradigm”. An "anomaly" arises when a puzzle, considered as important or essential in some way, cannot be solved. The anomaly cannot be written off as just an ill-conceived research project; it continues to assert itself as a thorn in the side of the practicing scientists. The anomaly is a novelty that cannot be written off, and which cannot be solved.” This was all in the Kuhn’ Cycle and it the model was good that it navigated through the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and other world problems....

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KarlPopper was born on 28 July 1902 in Vienna in a family interested in political and social issues but also in music. These helped shape his thoughts regarding critical and dogmatic thinking, the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity and his hostility towards historicism. While at university he got involved in left wing politics and became interested in the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler and even Marx for a short period.
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A theory of induction is superfluous. It has no function in a logic of science.
The best we can say of a hypothesis is that up to now it has been able to show its worth, and that it has been more successful than other hypotheses although, in principle, it can never be justified, verified, or even shown to be probable. This appraisal of the hypothesis relies solely upon deductive consequences (predictions) which may be drawn from the hypothesis: There is no need even to mention “induction” (Popper LSD, 315).
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KarlPopper and ThomasKuhn are two monumental figures of twentieth century philosophy of science. Although Popper and Kuhn have dissimilar approaches as to how science “works”, practicing scientists of today apply their revolutionary ideas. In Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations, the implication is made that science must begin with myth, which will directly lead to the critique of such myth. Concurrently, in Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he suggests that science is not accumulated “linearly” but is rather subject to “paradigm shifts”. With two different theories of science in philosophy, one that attempts to repudiate the inductivist form of the scientific method, the other a consensus of commendable instances of scientific research, it is made apparent that…THESIS
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Popper can be seen as an empiricist who attempted to distinguish his own type of empiricism, different from that of other philosophers. Although Popper was not a logical positivist, he did communicate and disagree with them. Popper’s initial goal was to ‘understand science;’ he began to develop a system with which to distinguish science from ‘non-science’ or ‘pseudo-science’. Popper coined this obstacle ‘the problem of demarcation. He attempted to deal with this problem by proposing a solution which he entitled ‘falsificationism,’ which claimed that ‘a...

...Sir KarlPopper, challenging the status quo, inspiring generations to ponder on the meaning of science, the methods to find truth, is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Of particular importance to scientific methods of inquiry is the brawl between the development of theory and the criteria for science. In Popper’s own words, it is in this brawl that Popper decided to “grapple with the problem: When should a theory be ranked as scientific? or Is there a criterion for the scientific character or status of a theory?” (Popper 1957), p. 1).
Born just after the turn of the century in 1902 (my Great Aunt was 4 at the time), in London, England, Popper began grappling with the brawl between “when is theory scientific” and “what is the criteria for the scientific character of theory” in the fall of 1919 (p. #). The thing that troubled Popper most he stated is “When is theory true?” (Popper 1957), p. 1-2). Born from the thing that was troubling Popper most originated his philosophy of Science as Falsification. First, it may be dangerous to proceed any further in this discussion without bringing into light perspectives about the time when Popper toiled on the naissance of falsification.
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Argue that truth is evolving and can never be absolutely known. As it turns out they were wrong, thus ultimately harmful for the evolution of Human Knowledge.
Popper was a Realist but did not believe that we could Demonstrate True Knowledge of Reality
“My thesis is that realism is neither demonstrable nor refutable. Realism like anything else outside logic and finite arithmetic is not demonstrable; but while empirical scientific theories are refutable, realism is not even refutable. (It shares this irrefutability with many philosophical or 'metaphysical' theories, in particular also with idealism.) But it is arguable, and the weight of the arguments is overwhelmingly in its favor.” (Popper, 1975)
Problem of Induction: How can it be shown that inductive inferences (at least probabilistic ones) are valid, or can be valid?
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...African view"involves the theory of Popper, "How to convince a reluctant scientist" involves the theory of Kuhn and "Common sense of science" involves accumulation of both those theories in Lakatos. They are connected because "Chance: An African view" and "How to convince a reluctant scientist" are opposite of each other and Lakatos is a combination of the two.
The article of "Chance: An African View" involves the theory of Popper. Popper's theory implied that scientists should give up a theory as soon as they encounter any falsifying evidence, immediately replacing it with increasingly 'bold and powerful' new hypotheses. His theory, called falsifiability, is an important concept in the idea that a proposition or theory cannot be scientific if it does not admit the possibility of it being false. Falsifiable does not mean false. For a proposition to be falsifiable, it must be at least in principle possible to make an observation that would show the proposition to be false, even if that observation has not been made. For example, the proposition "All crows are black" would be falsified by observing one white crow. The article talks about how there is no such thing as chance. That there is a cause for everything, thus fact and being able to falsify it, Popper's theory, comes into motion.
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